


Assisted

by giantsequoia



Series: Old Souls [2]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2017-09-06
Packaged: 2018-12-24 13:22:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12013638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giantsequoia/pseuds/giantsequoia
Summary: A beleaguered platoon of Milky Way fighters receives assistance from an unexpected source, but not everyone is ready to accept such an ally.





	Assisted

“ _Fuck_!” Malik yelled as several more rounds of Ravager fire blasted away at the tumble of concrete he and his squad were hiding behind. The ground itself trembled with the force of the explosions, and the hellish noise was intense enough to be painful even through his helmet. Chunks of debris, fist-sized and smaller, rained down on the defenders as they hunkered behind the barricade.

Malik keyed on his comm. “Commander, we _need_ to fall back!” he said, struggling to keep his voice at conversational volume despite the tremendous amounts of adrenaline and fear pumping through his system. The last thing Lt. Commander Tatiana Bryant needed right now was her frontline screaming in her ear unnecessarily. “This debris isn’t going to hold much longer, and we have even less to cover our retreat!”

“Negative!” Tatiana said tersely over the comm. “You’re our primary screen, Bravo Squad. Drone is still en route – escort ran into some trouble. Command _needs_ that data or this whole mission is a bust!”

The Ravager fire stopped, and for a moment there was no sound from Malik’s immediate surroundings apart from the crackling and settling of rubble – underscored, as always, by far-off explosions, gunfire, and yelling. Cautiously, clutching his M-76 Revenant, he raised himself up _juuust_ enough to peer over the concrete barricade.

Immediately he ducked back down, cursing fluently in two of the languages he knew. The Ravagers were scuttling aside, but they were making way for something much worse.

“We’ve got incoming Banshees!” he said into the comm, this time not bothering to keep his voice down. “With all due respect, Commander, tell the drone escort to _hurry the fuck up_!”

He keyed off the comm and resumed cursing, moving on to the other two languages he knew.

Urdnot Vorga chuckled beside him. The thousand-year-old krogan warlord’s laugh sounded rockier than the actual pieces of rock bouncing down the barricade around them. “I don’t think that last one fully translated,” he rumbled, lifting his head up a little to visually confirm the Banshee sighting and carelessly tossing out a carnage blast from his modded Graal. He was so personally huge that even squatting down, he barely had to move to see over their cover. Malik doubted that their impromptu barricade could withstand much more punishment before deteriorating enough to expose Vorga to enemy fire – not that the krogan probably would have minded.

“It referred to a solitary sexual position that is considered challenging for humans,” the towering geth prime on Malik’s other side informed Vorga promptly. “It is in fact unlikely to be physically possible for a human to perform without genetic or surgical alteration.”

Like Vorga, Repentant Prime – affectionately nicknamed ‘Big Sexy Robot’ by certain members of Bravo Squad – was almost too big to take cover behind the barricade. Unlike Vorga, however, she wasn’t even trying. She stood at her full three-metre height, content behind her deployed hexagonal barrier.

“Would you please _get down_?” Malik said to the geth through gritted teeth. It worried him that even with a krogan warlord on one side of him and a geth prime on the other, he didn’t feel the slightest bit safe. “I know that shield of yours is super great at absorbing enemy fire, but exposing yourself like that _draws_ _more of it to our position-_ ”

“Malik, you may wish to brace yourself,” Repentant Prime interrupted him. “Vorga, you need not.”

Malik groaned and did as the geth suggested, grabbing a twisted bit of rebar just in time to weather twin biotic novas unleashed by the two Banshees on the other side of the barricade. The force was diluted enough by the concrete to not fully take down Malik’s shields, but the blast rattled his teeth and there was no way to protect his ears from the godawful, overlapping wails that accompanied the attack.

“Should kill!” snarled Ziz, the vorcha crouched on Vorga’s other side. He hadn’t braced himself at all, and Malik could tell by the snap of mass effect fields around him that his shields had been knocked out by the novas. Ziz didn’t appear to care at all, or even to have noticed. His clawed hands gripped a rare and expensive N7 Crusader, modded with a massive omni-blade.

“No sit here and wait for monsters to find,” Ziz went on, his guttural words barely making it through Malik’s translator intact. “Kill now! Attack! If wait, we flanked! Then we overrun, drone escort dies, data lost!”

A year ago, Malik would have laughed at anyone who told him he would be getting tactical advice from a vorcha, let alone _sound_ tactical advice. If nothing else, the war had forced him to revise a number of preconceptions he’d had about multiple alien species. Vorcha for one, krogan for another; geth for sure, and yes, even batarians.

“He’s right,” said Magar, the four-eyed, spikily-armoured alien crouched beside Repentant Prime. “Banshees and Ravagers never advance without a screen in front of them. There must be husks circling around for us. We have to move before they get here, or else start wearing down those Banshees right now.”

“I could take every husk on this planet by myself,” Vorga said dismissively. “Let them come. The rest of you can take out a couple of screamers.”

“Sure, if we had room to kite, and if they didn’t have Ravagers behind them,” Malik said, hunkering down a little lower as another round of fire began tearing into the barricade. “But we don’t, and they do. It’s not that I doubt you, Vorga, believe me. But if you and BSR get swarmed by husks, then neither of you are threatening the Banshees, and that means they’re coming for _us_. I don’t feel like getting melted or impaled today.”

“Data more important than _you_ ,” said Ziz.

“Agreed, but if we’re going to spend our lives protecting it, we need to make sure it’s worth it,” Malik said. As he spoke, a horrible, skin-tingling buzz briefly filled the air, and he looked up to see a writhing biotic warp field passing overhead. The Banshees were still attacking, so at least they hadn’t advanced any further. Sooner or later, though....

More tortured screams erupted, and Malik tensed in fear. Yet another wave of adrenaline pulsed through his body. _Sooner_ it was, then.

“Visual on husks!” Magar yelled, throwing out a warp field of his own at the entrance to a nearby alley, where several husks had indeed appeared. Grinning, Vorga unslung his hammer.

“Commander, we’re out of time!” Malik said into his comm over the bark of Ziz’s Crusader and the _fizz_ of Repentant Prime’s siege pulse. “We’ll be overwhelmed if we don’t start moving _now_!”

“Acknowledged!” Tatiana replied, her voice accompanied by the tinny, filtered sounds of gunfire and explosions on her end. “Get out of there, Bravo! Drone is four minutes from evac point. All squads: fall back! Protect the data!”

 _Finally_. Now all they had to do was survive the next four minutes. “You heard the lady!” Malik called as he lifted his Revenant into firing position and opened up on the line of husks running at them. “Head for the evac zone, now! Vorga, Ziz, take point! Magar, midline with me! BSR, cover our backs if you can!”

“Affirmative,” Repentant Prime said calmly as the vorcha and krogan charged forward.

The next few minutes were hell, but not quite _pure_ hell, which Malik had also lived through. Later on – for he would survive this retreat, as he somehow had many others – he would have the leisure and presence of mind to contemplate how accustomed he was becoming to inhabiting such a state, and to worry himself about it. While it was happening, though, he had no choice but to be totally in the moment.

Ahead of him, Ziz was painting the street with his flamethrower, roasting the onrushing husks. Their hisses became gurgles as fire consumed them. When his fuel ran out, Vorga moved in: armour aglow with omni-tech, sweeping away entire handfuls of ghastly post-human candles with single blows of his hammer. Ziz protected the warlord’s right flank, tearing into the husks with his claws and omni-blade while he waited for his omnifactory to manufacture more fuel. Magar took care of Vorga’s left, tearing husks in half with his biotic lashes and tossing out cluster grenades whenever their numbers swelled.

Malik took care of any stragglers with precise bursts from his Revenant, trusting his squad to call out when they needed him. The main focus of his attention was to their rear; he and Repentant Prime walked slowly backwards while the others advanced.

They’d only gotten about ten metres from the tumble of concrete when the hideous, horned visages of the Banshees appeared. The transformed asari slowly climbed over the barricade, their fleshless faces agape, their long claws curling around the bits and pieces of building. Behind them, Malik could hear the Ravagers skittering and the occasional nauseating _splash_ as one of them opened up a sac of Swarmers.

Repentant Prime kept up a steady stream of siege pulses, focusing three-quarters of her salvos on one of the Banshee and using the last pulse in her quartet to keep the other’s attention. While her pulses recharged, she deployed a hovering turret and a combat drone to harass the creatures a bit more. Meanwhile, Malik switched his Revenant to full auto and unloaded entire clips at the one taking the brunt.

They were lucky, and the gods of aiming were with him today. The Banshees needed time to get over the uneven tumble of debris, and while they were doing that they could neither charge themselves up nor attack with their biotics. Malik was tense and focused enough that he managed to unload most of his clips into the Banshee’s face, despite the small target, without missing more than ten percent of his shots. The Banshee was forced to focus its barrier in front of its vulnerable eyes and mouth, so its reserves were depleted faster.

By the time the Banshees had reached the squad’s previous position and were standing on level ground, Malik’s HUD readout showed almost no barrier remaining on the one on his left. Now was a critical moment: if he and Repentant Prime could keep it under control, they could force it to attack in self-defense. But if they allowed it to charge itself up, its barrier would be restored and they would be in a shitload of trouble.

It looked like they were going to be in for it anyway. A few more pulses slammed into the weakened Banshee’s midsection, and it began to attack, pantomiming an ancient asari battle mnemonic. The warp field it produced could be dodged; the important thing was that while it attacked, it stood still, allowing the squad to gain more ground.

But the other Banshee was not nearly so depleted, and Malik had a sinking feeling about what it was going to do.

“Banshee charging up!” he called out over the comms, totally unnecessarily but unable not to warn his comrades just in case they missed the bloodcurdling scream amidst the chaos of other noises. The Banshee on the right leaned forward as it shrieked, alerting every attentive fighter in a hundred-metre radius of what it was about to do.

“Malik, stay behind me!” Repentant Prime called as she switched over to unloading her full salvo on the charging Banshee. “Continue firing at the other! Do you have any grenades remaining?”

“Not many!” Malik said wildly, gritting his teeth against the terror as he reloaded.

In fact he had two, and now was a perfect time to use one. The two Banshees were still close enough together that he might be able to hit both them with a single grenade, but that window was closing rapidly.

Frantically, Malik selected one and programmed it for incendiary, hoping to burn away some of the defenseless Banshee’s densely-armoured skin. He tossed it out, clicking the detonation command on his omni-tool just as the charged Banshee leapt forward.

He couldn’t be sure if the blast had damaged it, but it tore one of the other one’s arms clean off, so it wasn’t a total waste. Unfortunately, that one had produced a warp just before the blast, which was now humming and flickering through the air towards them – and it was headed not for Repentant Prime, but for Malik.

“Cannibals!” Vorga boomed behind him as Malik lurched to one side, avoiding the homing biotic missile at the last possible moment. It exploded behind him, tearing a two-metre hole into the charred street.

Malik’s heartrate, already elevated, kept climbing. Cannibals could shoot. If their attention was diverted from his squadmates behind him, he would have only his shields to protect him. He simply could not afford to turn his back on the Banshees.

Magar roared in wordless fury, and moments later there was a resonant _bang_ as he presumably annihilated a former member of his species with a biotic rupture. Brightness flared and shadows danced on the walls of the ruined buildings; Ziz had lit his flamethrower again.

The charged Banshee was now teleporting towards him and Repentant Prime several metres at a time. Malik had no choice but to trust that the geth would keep its attention while he continued firing desperately at whose barriers were down. Whenever he had a second to spare, he glanced quickly behind him to ensure it was safe to keep backing up.

At some point Magar had charged forward to join Vorga and Ziz at the front, leaving Malik alone in the middle of their squad. Malik wished the batarian had stayed at his side, but he knew he’d had no choice. All three were engaged in vicious melee combat, tearing apart the husks that were swarming them in frightening numbers. The front few ranks of the creatures were on fire, and several were aglow and coming apart with dark energy from Magar’s biotics. The curbs to either side of their advance were littered with wretched, ruined bodies.

Malik caught all of this only in glimpses now and then. He thanked his lucky stars for Repentant Prime when the charging Banshee caught up with them in moments, but stopped in front of the imposing geth rather than coming for _him_. Doggedly, he kept firing at the one still standing at the barricade, wearing it away bit by bit.

It got off another warp before he dispatched it, and as it let the attack go it leaned forward and screamed, preparing to charge like its sister. Malik was forced to keep firing lest it recharge its barriers, finally finishing it off just before it began to leap forward. The monster dissolved into ash and blue sparks, but its final attack was still headed straight for him.

He had no time to dodge, so he simply ate the warp. His shields collapsed instantly, and agony wracked his body. He did his best to bite back his scream, furious with himself for being unable to dodge and demanding that he make up for it by not distracting his teammates.

As his hardsuit administered painkillers and medi-gel, Malik turned back for another glance behind him. Magar was bleeding, and Vorga was temporarily down on one knee, regenerating. Ziz was several metres ahead of them both, snarling and howling and tearing furiously into a line of Cannibals. He too was covered in blood, but his wounds were closing as fast as he received them. Vorcha were terrifying.

Malik turned back as he felt the diffusing shockwave of another Banshee warp ripple past him. This one had hit Repentant Prime directly, but luckily the geth’s shields were enormously powerful. The prime had planted herself in the middle of the street, standing her ground and keeping the Banshee occupied while the rest of the squad kept moving.

“Leave this platform behind if you must,” Repentant Prime said over a private channel to Malik. “Make good your escape while the geth guard your back.”

“Fuck that!” Malik spat back on the same channel. “We’re not leaving you behind!”

“This world is within range of the Consensus,” Repentant Prime said, and Malik was shocked to hear her synthetic voice modulated into a soothing tone. “There are carriers enough for us to survive. We can return in another body, Malik. You and the others cannot. And there are more Reapers approaching.”

Malik shifted to one side enough to peer around the massive shape of Repentant Prime and the glowing, shrieking Banshee she was grappling with. The barricade was now coated with Swarmers that were doing their best to live up to their name. The clumsy, slow-moving Ravagers had finally caught up, and were now beginning coming into view above and around the concrete chunks.

As he lifted his gun, ready to fire, Repentant Prime tossed out a turret and a combat drone. The turret began mowing down Swarmers, while the drone moved in to deliver powerful shocks to the corrupted rachni.

“Please, Malik,” Repentant Prime said, still on a private channel. “As long as the Consensus exists, we are immortal. We feel neither fear nor pain. Escape.”

Grimacing, wishing he could reach into his helmet to wipe the tears from his eyes, Malik lowered his rifle. “Fine,” he ground out. “But you’d _better_ come back, you Big Sexy Robot, and you’d better come back to _our squad_. Not another. You’re one of us, now and forever.”

“We appreciate your loyalty,” the geth replied. “Thank you, Malik. We shall see you again.”

“Looking forward to it.” Giving his head a shake, Malik cut the private channel, turned tail, and ran.

The blue targeting lasers were all the warning he had. Jolted by fear, he dodged to one side, and the Ravager’s blast missed him by centimetres. With no time or breath to call out a warning, he dodged again immediately in the other direction. The second blast missed him as well.

In the split second before the third blast came, Malik saw the blue laser – aimed squarely at the back of Magar’s head. The batarian was struggling with a husk that had grabbed him, and his shields were down.

Malik’s shields had only come back to half-power since absorbing the Banshee’s warp. Nevertheless, he dove again – this time directly _into_ the laser.

The blast hit him hard enough to knock him onto his face. His entire back burned with pain. His shields were once again gone, the material of his hardsuit punctured and superheated. More painkillers flooded his system.

Somehow, he forced himself to his feet. Vorga and Ziz were ahead of him, Ziz once again spraying fire, Vorga sniping Cannibals with his Graal. Malik stumbled forward a few more steps, eyes keen for any sign of blue lasers from behind, until he reached Magar.

Screaming, his arms glowing with biotic power, the batarian literally ripped the husk limb from limb. Two more that had been lurking just out of arm’s reach lunged forward, ready to attack while Magar was distracted. Malik kicked one hard in the stomach, shoving it back, and blasted the other one’s head into pieces with his Revenant.

“The geth?” Magar coughed as his corona died away, taking a split second to recover with his hands on his thighs.

“Buying us time,” Malik said, grabbing Magar’s arm and tugging him forward.

“Get off me,” Magar snarled, and Malik let him go. Together they moved on, killing several more husks, until they rejoined Ziz and Vorga.

“Evac in two minutes!” came Tatiana’s voice over the comm.

“Ravagers behind us,” Malik gasped to the others.

“How many?” Vorga demanded, blasting more Cannibals with his shotgun.

Malik glanced behind him and felt his blood run cold. There were a _lot_ more Ravagers than there had been a few minutes ago. A dozen at least, crawling over the barricade. Repentant Prime was surrounded, still grappling with the Banshee.

“Too many to deal with,” he said. “BSR’s holding them off while we retreat. She’ll be back in another body, or so she said. I don’t know.”

Vorga growled in reply and kept up what he was doing. Malik joined him, his nerves nearly shot but forced to stay focused as a matter of survival.

His Revenant had an excellent rate of fire, but performed poorly at long range, so he focused on spraying husks as they closed in while Magar lashed the more distant targets with his biotics. Vorga kept firing at the mid-range Cannibals, occasionally unslinging his hammer to pound a few husks into the street. Ziz, meanwhile, joined Magar in picking off the furthest Cannibals, scoring headshots with his single-slug Crusader shots that would have made Malik itch with jealousy if he’d had the emotional capacity to spare.

As they passed an intersection, Malik glanced to either side. The cross-street was empty, but far off to the right he could see a parallel route – swarming with Cannibals, Marauders, and husks. All of them were heading towards the evac point, ignoring Bravo Squad completely.

“Shit, shit, _shit_!” he ground out.

Fortune smiled on them again, however, as just at that moment there was a lull. Ziz, his bloodlust fully aroused, darted back and forth on his legs and one arm as they took the opportunity to advance unhindered. Magar chugged an energy drink, and Vorga repaired the blade attached to his Graal with his omni-tool.

Malik called up a tactical map on his HUD, his eyes homing instantly onto the quadrant to their right. Alpha Squad’s sector.

“Alpha, you’ve got a massive wave coming in from the northwest route,” he reported.

“We’ve taken heavy casualties!” yelled a quarian voice he didn’t recognize. “We won’t survive another wave!”

“Bravo is en route,” Malik said tensely. “One minute out! Hold on, Alpha!” To his own squad he added “Let’s move!”

“Where _are_ you, Bravo?” Tatiana cut in. The gunfire and yelling filtering in from her end sounded a lot closer this time. “Evac is almost here! Get your asses back _now_!”

“Repentant Prime is down,” Malik snapped back. “Repeat, the geth prime is down. We’ve got a hundred more metres to cover. Coming as fast as we can!”

“Incoming!” said Magar. Ziz, impatient for battle, leapt on ahead, with Vorga hot on his heels.

Marauders had now joined the Cannibals and husks confronting them. Malik focused on them, leaving Vorga and Ziz to handle the swarms of unshielded Reaper troops.

Three of former turians standing in close proximity, surrounded by Cannibals and with husks streaming past on either side, presented too tempting a target to resist. Malik called out a warning and tossed his last grenade, programmed for EMP.

The resulting blast tore through the Marauders’ shields, blasting them and the surrounding monsters into gore. Yet as many as he’d killed, there were more streaming in from side streets all around. The Reapers’ numbers were as endless as ever.

Still they pressed on. Ziz lit his flamethrower as Vorga bull-rushed a line of husks, knocking them aside like so many bowling pins. Magar was nearing exhaustion, switching to his pistol as his primary weapon and lashing only the Marauders who were distracted by Vorga and Ziz.

Malik supported them all with his Revenant, eyes darting back and forth as he searched for targets closing in that his teammates hadn’t noticed. His battle-focus had hardened even further: there were no conscious thoughts in his mind besides scoring headshots with his rifle. The urge to spray indiscriminately was a constant itch, but as tempting as it was, it was simply too inefficient.

They were a single block from the evac point when something unexpected happened. Green light flared abruptly on the next street over, accompanied by a _bang_ like a biotic rupture, but louder. Startled momentarily out of his focus by the noise, Malik glanced down the street as they entered the intersection. What he saw made his jaw drop.

The cross-street was filled with Reaper creatures – or what remained of them. They were shuddering and dying before his eyes, stumbling and falling to their knees as their bodies melted into green muck. The noise of it was horrifically _wet_ , as heads and claws and limbs fell off, splashing into chunks on the street.

Malik had never seen _anything_ like that before, and he was deeply curious and fearful of what might have caused it – irrespective of the fact that it could only be a good thing. Perhaps Alpha Squad had come up with a tech solution to the incoming wave? But what could they have possibly done that had worked so well, and so fast?

He could not afford the time it would take to wonder. More Reapers stood behind Bravo and the evac point, including several Brutes that would demand their full attention.

“Squad. Ammo?” he panted as he reloaded his Revenant, checking his own stores. They were distressingly low.

“Out,” said Ziz.

“Two clips,” said Vorga.

“Magar, any to spare?” Malik said. “I should be good for now.”

“Here,” said Magar, tossing a few clips each to the krogan and vorcha. “Make them count.”

Malik whirled around, suddenly remembering the swarm of Ravagers that had overtaken Repentant Prime minutes ago. Part of his attention had been alert for blue lasers, but there had been one. In fact, there hadn’t been any fire at all from behind them since the volley he’d dodged and then blocked. Where had those Ravagers gone?

The street behind them was knee-deep in corpses in some places. The sheer number of Reaper ground troops they’d killed just to get this far stunned him. Several blocks back he made out the shape of the barricade, but there was nothing in between here and there.

No sign of Repentant Prime, and not a Ravager in sight.

“What...?” Malik murmured, confused and afraid. Had the rachni circled around somehow? Were they about to be flanked? He glanced again up and down the cross street, but all he saw were floods of unearthly green liquid, made lumpy here and there by a few still-twitching limbs.

“Malik!” Vorga roared, starting him back into focus. “Get your head out of your ass! Thirty seconds to evac!”

The next half a minute was once again too intense for much thought, if any, above muscle memory and instinct. Vorga, in a display of pure quad that Malik would remember for years, charged headlong at the first oncoming Brute. Ziz torched it from the side – neither he nor Vorga seeming to care that the krogan took some of the fire too – while Magar pounded it with the last of his biotic strength. Malik, once again, covered all of them at once as best he could, picking off Marauders and Cannibals that tried to take advantage of the distraction caused by the Brute.

The good news was that they were now close enough to the waiting shuttles to have support from the other squads, the survivors of which had converged on this location. Human, salarian, quarian, and geth snipers down the street took care of every husk that threatened Bravo Squad, while asari huntresses softened up the second and third Brutes with their biotics. A pair of turian Havocs swooped along the rooftops above, savaging several Ravagers that tried to fire at the street from positions of advantage. Friendly combat drones buzzed back and forth, doling out shield recharges.

“Data is secure!” Tatiana’s voice yelled over the comm. “Into the shuttles, now! Move, move, _move_!”

More green light erupted behind Malik as he moved, accompanied by a _bang_ and more hideous splashing noises. He dared not look back, but as he passed, he caught sight of Anis – a salarian sniper – lowering his rifle with terror and shock etched across his face.

“We’ve got Harvesters inbound!” Tatiana screamed. She was now close enough that Malik could see her, and hear her with his ears rather than over comm. She was busy as she spoke, slashing husks to ribbons with her sword and winking in and out of sight. “Ten seconds to evac!”

Several UT-47A Kodiak shuttles were hovering around the intersection, waiting with open hatches for the various squads to get inside. The one in the middle had several humans, turians, batarians, and krogan already onboard, clustered around a single bright blue information drone. All of them were firing out at the Reapers closing in.

“Get going!” Malik urged his squad. “I’ll cover you!”

Magar, injured and spent, wasted no time in doing just that. Ziz bounded along at his side, stopping briefly to eviscerate a husk that lunged for the batarian. Vorga followed in his wake, empty shotgun clipped to his belt and laying about him with his hammer, knocking away more husks. Malik watched Vorga’s back, carefully spending his very last clip on several Marauders who were occupied spinning out their revolting red-black scab armour onto a line of advancing Cannibals.

The other squads were falling back as well, boarding their own shuttles. Malik eyed his HUD whenever he had a second to spare, counting the hardsuit signals as they were accounted for. Alpha Squad had indeed taken heavy casualties, but there were at least four survivors aboard their Kodiak already. Whatever had blown up the wave of troops he’d seen, it had apparently saved several lives.

Now, in the distance, he could make out the approaching shapes of something even worse than Banshees: Harvesters, immense flying monstrosities whose cannons could vaporize handfuls of people at once. Several of them were flapping their way towards the evacuation point. They weren’t in range yet, but they would be in seconds.

“Malik!” Tatiana was now right beside him, one hand on his shoulder and the other popping off husks with an M-77 Paladin. “On the shuttle, now!”

The two of them and a few stubborn, enraged vorcha were the last few members of the platoon on the ground, backed against the Kodiaks as the wall of husks closed in. Malik looked over his shoulder; Magar and Ziz were aboard their shuttle, as was Vorga, who was reaching out a hand towards him. A few others, survivors of other squads, were in the shuttle as well.

Tatiana had given him a direct order, so he obeyed, accepting Vorga’s hand. The krogan pulled him into the Kodiak, and it began to lift away immediately. On the ground below, Tatiana and the vorcha leapt onto their own shuttle just in time to avoid an incoming wave of Ravager fire that blasted the street where they’d been standing into pits and flying chunks of rubble.

“Get us out of here!” the N7 said over comms.

As the hatch closed, Malik’s eyes were on the harvesters. One of them was in range of Alpha Squad’s shuttle, and he was tense with fear. He could see it powering up its cannon, preparing to blast them out of the sky.

“ _No_ -” he groaned, but then gasped as something else appeared.

A small, flitting shape darted into his line of sight. It was too far away to tell what it was, but it was unsettlingly familiar. Bipedal, and _winged_?

It raised a long limb – or was it holding a rifle? – and from it lanced a bright beam of sickly yellow fire.

The beam hit the Harvester, knocking its head around. Its cannon blast speared into the sky, missing Alpha’s shuttle. Then the hatch closed, and Malik lost sight.

“What the _hell_?” he sputtered, shoving past Vorga to get to the Kodiak’s interior console. He tapped in a few commands, calling up an exterior view.

The feed appeared on the screen. The Harvesters were in view, shrinking steadily as the fleet of shuttles tore away from the intersection. The streets below swarmed with a writhing carpet of husks. The flying shape, whatever it was, still darted amidst the Harvesters, moving so quickly that his eyes could barely track it. Lines of yellow fire cut the monsters savagely, removing one’s wing and blasting another right in the head.

“What _is_ that thing?” Malik demanded to the shuttle at large.

There was no immediate response; everyone else was too exhausted and injured to talk much.

He’d been luckier than most, Malik reflected as he glanced back at his comrades. He’d taken some damage to his hardsuit, and his joints still ached from the lingering effects of the Banshee’s warp, but he would fight another day.

“Look!” said a startled voice. Malik turned to see that Anis, the salarian sniper he’d seen earlier, had joined him beside the viewscreen. He was pointing at it, mouth agape in shock.

Malik looked, and just in time. A bright glowing ball of green energy – biotics? – had appeared in the midst of the Harvesters. The tiny shape was no longer visible, but he could tell where it was from the sickly yellow lance it was firing as it fled.

The green sphere exploded, momentarily flaring so brightly that Malik winced. When he opened his eyes again, no fewer than four Harvesters were tumbling out of the sky, dissolving, trailing bits and flaps of themselves as they transmuted into paste.

“What... the... _fuck_?” Malik said in terrified awe.

“I saw it,” Anis said in his high-pitched voice, clearly as frightened as Malik was. “I saw it killing Ravagers as we retreated. I know what it is. I’ve seen images, recordings....”

“What?” Malik said, turning to him and gripping his slender shoulder. “What is it? Can it help us?”

“I don’t know.” Anis shook his head, still staring at the screen. “It’s... it’s a Collector. I’ve never heard of one assisting real people before. I thought they were Reaper tools.”

“You’re _shitting_ me,” Vorga spoke up incredulously behind them as the Kodiak shuddered and groaned through a patch of turbulence. “You’re saying a Collector _helped_ us?”

“That’s certainly what it looked like,” Anis replied. “I saw it use its gun-”

He kept talking, but Malik had tuned him out. As soon as the word _Collector_ had reached his ears, his muscles had tensed up and his vision narrowed to a point. Despite the fact that they were safe in their shuttle with the Harvesters behind them and combat over for the day, only now had he broken out in a cold sweat.

He was afraid of Reapers, as any sane person would be, but he could cope in combat against them. He’d done so today and many times before, and he would do so again.

But the Collectors were worse. _Far_ worse, in his opinion.

He remembered Horizon. He’d barely escaped. Mouthless faces, buzzing insect wings, incomprehensible chittering. A pierce in the back of his neck, and then paralysis. Clawed hands gripping his body firmly, yet with uncanny gentleness. Placing him in a warm, humid pod-

He jerked out of the memory of it, letting out a helpless grunt. His Revenant dropped from nerveless fingers as he scrambled at the release catches of his helmet. It took him several moments to free himself from its confines, but even after he’d dropped that to the shuttle floor too, he still felt constricted.

His hardsuit, with its secure, comforting protection that he’d enjoyed for the past day and a half on the planet below, suddenly felt like a coffin. He couldn’t _wait_ to get out of it, to get out of this shuttle and into the open air of wherever they were going....

The viewscreen was obscured, as they were now above the cloud layer and heading into orbit. Malik dismissed the feed anyway and tried to wipe the sweat off his forehead, but his hand was still armoured, so it didn’t work very well. He concentrated instead on trying to control his breathing.

After a minute of fighting off a panic attack, he glanced surreptitiously behind him. Anis was telling Vorga what he knew about Collectors; the krogan was still skeptical that one had seemingly turned against the Reapers.

None of the others appeared to have noticed Malik’s reaction – except for Magar, who was giving him an odd look.

Malik met the batarian’s lower set of eyes for a moment, then the upper set. Then he turned away and headed over – a little unsteadily – to sit down on a bench, eyes on his hands. He said nothing for the remainder of the trip.


End file.
